


Best-laid plans

by ofstormsandwolves



Series: nevertheless, she persisted [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst, Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 07:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11398203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/ofstormsandwolves
Summary: When Mickey had wanted to send Rose to Pete's World to escape the Daleks and Cybermen, he told her his hopper could only carry one person. When Pete comes back to save Rose from falling into the Void, she finds out the reason why...





	Best-laid plans

Her fingers slipped, a cry was torn from her throat, and a fleeting thought crossed Rose Tyler’s mind. The Doctor would be alone.

Even as she hurtled towards the Void, the Doctor’s voice calling her name, her final thoughts were of him. He’d be alone. After she’d told her mother she couldn’t leave him, after she’d returned from the safety of the parallel world to take her place once more at the Time Lord’s side, he’d be alone.

And then she hit something solid, unexpected. A suit-clad shoulder, but not the Doctor. Rose blinked. Pete. It was Pete, returned from the parallel world to save her...

Rose was able to manage one last fleeting glance over her shoulder at the Doctor’s panic-stricken face before there was the familiar pull of the dimension hopper as Pete activated it. A sickening twist, her stomach in her throat, and another twist before it felt like the space-time continuum had spat them out again. 

She was on her feet in an instant, hardly registering the mess the parallel lever room was in, hardly registering the dim light, and her mother’s worried expression. Hardly registering the pain in her body as she launched herself at the still, white wall.

“Take me back! Take me back!”

Behind her, she was vaguely aware of Pete’s voice, and it sounded a little... Odd. But Rose hardly registered it.

“It’s stopped working,” Pete told Jackie and Mickey, his voice slightly strained, like he was trying to ignore some bad pain. “He did it. He closed the breach.”

If Jackie noticed anything odd about Pete’s voice, she didn’t say anything, but Rose thought she heard Mickey quietly ask Pete if he was alright. He seemed to brush the question off, dismiss Mickey with the order to go and find Jake, and to go and get a medic.

Rose sagged against the wall then, face tear-streaked and head pounding. Then, almost in a rush, the events of the last ten minutes seemed to catch up with her, the adrenaline dissipating like a sudden end to a freak storm. Her arms and shoulders ached and protested at where she had been stretched while trying to maintain her grip first on the magna clamp, and then on the lever. Her head was starting to feel like a migraine was building, and for reasons she couldn’t quite grasp, her right leg was beginning to really throb.

“Rose?”

It was her mum’s voice, and Rose was vaguely aware that it was just her and her parents in the lever room now, as Mickey had left to do as Pete had asked and locate a medic and Jake. But still Rose didn’t turn round.

“It might be best if you sit down,” Pete said suddenly, and his voice was surprisingly close. He sounded... Drained, though, and now that Rose thought about it, her earlier suspicions of him possibly hiding pain seemed like they might be right. “We need to get you looked over.”

“Why?” Jackie demanded, and even without looking Rose knew that her mother was on the defensive. “Pete? What are you...? Oh my god, you’re bleeding!”

At that, Rose whipped round, but was overcome by a sudden blinding pain in her head and her leg, and moments later she felt herself falling. There was a thud, and some small part of her mind recognised that she’d hit the floor, and that it must have hurt, but she couldn’t really think past the blinding pain in her leg.

“Oh my god! Rose!” 

Moments later, Jackie was kneeling beside her daughter, trying to help her up into a sitting position, and it was only then that Rose processed that her right shin was bent at a peculiar angle. She blinked, swallowed, and looked up at Pete. He looked rather pale, and there was a thin line of blood that had trickled down his left hand from beneath his sleeve. There was a darkening patch on his already-dark suit, near the shoulder, and for some reason Rose knew that it was blood.

“Mickey’s gone to get a medic, Jaqs,” Pete told Jackie calmly, although one look at Rose’s leg had him averting his eyes. “Both Rose and I will be fine.”

“Fine?” Jackie snapped. “Have you seen my daughter’s leg? Since when did a leg bend like that?” 

Pete still wouldn’t look at Rose’s leg, and frankly, Rose couldn’t blame him. She was trying not to look too, although the telltale dampness of blood and the tang of iron in the air were rather distracting.

It was then that the door was flung open and Mickey and Jake hurried in, followed by a rather harried-looking medic in a white coat. She looked a little put-out at the matter, muttering something about how she should be halfway home as she dropped her bag of medical supplies on the floor.

“Pete,” the medic greeted. “What’s the problem?”

Pete grimaced slightly, before looking to Rose on the floor and then back to the medic. “We, uh, had a problem with the dimension hoppers.”

The medic eyed him warily, eyes lingering on the blood seeping through his jacket. “What sort of problem?” she asked, although she seemed to already know the answer.

“We had to use one hopper for two of us,” Pete explained, shifting under the scrutiny. “Honestly, Verity, it was the only option.”

Verity surveyed him for a moment longer before sniffing and looking him up and down. “Think you can hold out while I take a look at this young woman?” she asked, nodding to Rose. “Her injuries look like they’ll be more severe than yours.”

Pete just nodded, and gestured at Rose. “Go ahead.”

As Verity knelt to take a look at Rose’s injuries, the medic glanced up at Rose. “And what should I call you?”

Rose blinked, and looked to Pete, who looked more than a little wary.

“Rose,” she answered after a moment.

And then, Pete spoke up. “She’s my daughter.”

Verity blinked at him, before nodded slowly and turning back to Rose. “Alright then, Rose. I’m going to have to take a look at your leg now.”

Rose nodded, fingers instinctively clenching around Jackie’s as Verity pushed her trouser leg up to take a look at the injury. Almost immediately, every person in the room with the exception of the medic looked away.

“What caused that?” Jackie asked after a long moment of silence. “An’ how come she was able to stand on it?”

The medic chanced a glance at Pete before responding. “I assume you two are from the other universe, yes?” She paused while Jackie and Rose nodded. “When Rose and Pete came through with only one hopper, the device wasn’t able to sustain both bodies, which is why they’ve both been injured. The hoppers are only supposed to carry one person, otherwise they use up too much energy and malfunction. And when they malfunction...” She trailed off and gave a significant look down to where Rose’s lower right leg looked like it had been through a mangle. “If Rose was able to stand when she first arrived, I can only assume it was adrenaline. It most likely masked the pain and made Rose unaware of the injury at first.” She paused. “I’ll need to X-Ray it. That could have caused more problems.”

Rose swallowed at that, and looked to Mickey. “That’s what you meant earlier, wasn’t it?” she asked him quietly. “When we were with the Daleks. You said you could send me here, but it could only be one of us.”

Mickey nodded slowly from where he was still stood with Jake. “Yeah. We have a one hopper per person rule. While you and Pete are still alive, and it’s clear that the device can handle a little extra strain if there’s no other option, there was no way I was putting you through that for no reason.”

Rose nodded, and turned her attention back to Verity, who was carefully examining Rose’s leg. After a long while, the medic spoke again.

“I think we need to get her to hospital.”

Pete sighed. “That bad?” he asked unnecessarily. “Nothing you can do here?”

But Verity shook her head. “No chance. She needs to be in hospital, Pete. I won’t be able to do the surgery myself.”

Jackie’s eyes went wide. “Surgery?”

~0~0~

“So it’s like splinching then?”

Rose’s question was met with blank stares from Verity and the other doctors at a nearby private hospital. Both Rose and Jackie had been perplexed to find that, while Yvonne Hartman’s top-secret Torchwood had employed several hundred people, Pete’s known-to-the-public Torchwood had only about sixty people on its payroll. Meaning that, for Rose and Pete to undergo proper treatment, they had to leave Torchwood tower and be taken to a nearby, Pete-Tyler-approved private hospital.

“You know, like in Harry Potter?” Rose continued at the blank looks. “You disapparate and leave part of yourself behind an’ it’s called ‘splinching’?”

But that was met with just more blank stares. 

Rose sighed. “No Harry Potter here, then,” she muttered under her breath.

Jackie squeezed Rose’s hand in hers then, and took a deep breath before speaking. “And you can’t... Fix it? You can’t fix her leg, then? ‘Cause you’re, like, three years in our future, and you had those cyber-things, and are you sure you don’t have the technology?”

Verity sighed, and shook her head. “Now that we’ve done the scans... Rose’s nerves are damaged beyond repair. Even if we could repair the bone and muscle, she’d have no feeling in her foot or ankle, and from the state of the bone and muscle, fixing them still won’t allow her to put weight on it.”  
Jackie, however, clearly wasn’t ready to give up. “But Pete’s arm-”

“Pete’s arm wasn’t as severe as Rose’s leg,” Verity interrupted gently. “Pete has muscle damage to his upper left arm and will have some scarring and weakness, but will still be able to use his arm for everyday tasks and driving and so on. His injury didn’t break any bones beyond repair.”

It was Rose who squeezed Jackie’s hand then. “Mum, ‘s fine,” she murmured, though her voice wavered. “They know what they’re talkin’ about. If... If I need to have my leg amputated, then I need to have it amputated. Anyway, Dad said they’ve got really got prosthetics, and that he’d pay all the costs an’ everything.”

Unsurprisingly, Jackie still didn’t look too pleased. “Are you sure, sweetheart?” she asked nervously. “I mean, it’s not like you can change your mind again afterwards.”

Rose grimaced at that. “I know,” she admitted, biting her lip, “but if they think this is the best option, I’m tempted to agree.” She paused. “It hurts so much, Mum! An’ if that’s what I need to do to make it stop, then I’ll do it.”

Verity stepped in then, before Jackie could speak again. “It will be a below the knee amputation. And I really do think that it would be the best thing for Rose.”

Jackie bit her lip, looking over at her daughter who just blinked back. She was being dosed up on pain relief, having been hooked up to an IV almost the moment she’d arrived and had received the best care from the moment she’d been announced as billionaire Pete Tyler’s long-lost daughter. But it was clear to Jackie that her daughter was still in pain despite the hospital staff’s best efforts.

With a sigh, Jackie reluctantly nodded. “Give those papers here, then,” she said, reaching for the hospital forms.

~0~0~

Mickey Smith flopped onto the sofa Rose occupied, grinning at her as she glared and grabbed at her crutches to stop them from sliding to the floor.

“How you coping with your mum hovering around you?” Mickey asked as he nabbed the TV remote and changed channels.

Rose sighed, letting go of the crutches that were propped up against the arm of the sofa and watching as they slid to the floor. “She’s drivin’ me mad. I love her an’ all, but...”

“Yeah,” Mickey agreed sympathetically. “Still, Pete says your prosthetic will be ready soon.” He nodded at her leg, propped up on a footstool with a cushion beneath her stump.

“Next week, Verity reckons,” Rose nodded. “An’ she said the swelling’s gone down enough that it should be fine for me to start wearing it immediately.” She glanced at the crutches again, which were now lying on the sitting room floor. “Still stuck with those crutches for a while longer, though.”

Mickey watched her carefully for a few moments then. “Your dad says you’re interested in working at Torchwood,” he said after a long while.

“Might as well,” Rose shrugged uneasily. “I mean, I’ve gotta do something. Three months I’ve been here, and I can’t just sit here and do nothing, Mick. I’m not goin’ back to working in a shop, and I might actually be of some use in Torchwood. Mum and Dad want me on a desk job, though.”

“Understandable,” Mickey shrugged, glancing again at her right leg.

“But once I get my prosthetic there’s no point leaving me sat at a desk, Mick,” Rose grumbled. “That’s the whole point of Dad paying out for this fancy prosthetic leg, so that I can do what I always do.”

There was a heavy silence then, the fact that what she usually did was travel with the Doctor hanging in the air around them.

“He’s just worried,” Mickey said after a while. “He blames himself.”

“I know,” Rose sighed. “Me an’ Mum have told him it’s not his fault, but he won’t listen. Without him, well...” She trailed off. It didn’t need to be said.

She’d have been pulled into the Void.

“You’re settling in alright, then, you and Jackie?”

Rose nodded, and offered her friend a small smile. “Yeah. I think Mum’s already got plans for redecoratin’ half this place,” she said, glancing around the large sitting room as she spoke. “She loves it. She can really go overboard too, with gettin’ new furniture and everything. She and Dad can afford it now.” 

There was something wistful in her voice, an undertone of sadness as she spoke of her parents being together. Mickey sighed.

“Maybe it’s not all bad, babe,” he said softly. “Maybe the Doctor was wrong, maybe he can find a way to come and get you.”

Rose smiled at him sadly. “Yeah. Maybe.”

~0~0~

“This will be your desk, here,” Pete told his daughter, gesturing at the sparse desk in the corner of the sparse open-plan office space on a sparse floor of Torchwood Tower. “You’ll be our eyes and ears during field missions, monitoring the agents’ whereabouts and checking for signs of danger before they enter any buildings or covered areas. We’ll get you sorted with a comms system, and then you’ll be ready to start.”

Rose nodded mutely, unsure of what she should say, if anything. It was all feeling a bit surreal. Five and a half months into her new life in the parallel world and still none of it felt real. Still she woke in the mornings, expecting to find herself back on the TARDIS, the Doctor perched on the end of her bed and grinning like a loon.

But instead she woke in a bland guest room she hadn’t yet made her own, often with a residual ache where her right leg had once been, and a tightness in her chest at the realisation that it had indeed been real.

She supposed she shouldn’t complain. She was up and walking again, down to just the one crutch to help her about now that she’d undergone several rounds of physio and got her prosthetic leg. It had been fitted almost two months ago, some hi-tech thing that Pete had paid a fortune for without even blinking at the sheer sum of money he was handing over.

(“Only the best for my daughter”, he’d said, and there’d been a tightness in Rose’s chest at the words. His daughter. She had her Dad back.)

(And wasn’t that ironic? Why was it that whenever she gained her father she lost her Doctor?)

And so Rose took a seat at her desk, blinking at the blandness of it all and barely registering her father disappearing briefly before returning with a comms device in his hand. She took one look at the earpiece and balked.

Pete saw the look on her face and immediately dropped into a crouch beside her chair. “I promise you Rose, it’s perfectly safe. If it wasn’t, I’d not be able to go home and face your mother tonight, would I?”

That earned him a small smile from Rose, but it was clear she was still hesitant.

“All it does is to connect you to the field agents. Jake wears one, Mickey wears one, they’re perfectly safe.” Pete’s voice was soft, reassuringly. Fatherly. 

Rose nodded despite herself, somehow knowing that Pete was telling the truth. Maybe it was because he’d mentioned Mickey, and Rose knew her friend would have told her if he didn’t trust the earpieces. Or maybe it was because it was Pete, her dad. A parallel version, but still. Part of her felt like she could be back in that church in 1987, her dad telling her that it was his job for her mistakes to be his fault. They were one and the same, that Pete and this one in front of her. So she forced a smile and held her hand out for the comms device.

Pete watched as she inserted the earpiece, and it wasn’t long before his gaze drifted to her leg. While the prosthetic was indeed top of the range, and you wouldn’t be able to tell that Rose was wearing a prosthetic beneath her trousers unless you knew she was, it still made Pete a little uneasy.

“I know I’ve said it before,” he said suddenly, voice quiet as the sparse few other Torchwood employees on the floor bustled about around them, “but I really am sorry about what happened.”

“You saved my life,” Rose responded softly. “I’m here, in one piece. If you hadn’t... If you hadn’t come back for me, I’d be in a lot worse trouble than having to wear a prosthetic, Dad.”

He nodded slowly, seeming to take her words in but not really accept them.

“You’ve got your login for the computer?” he asked suddenly, and it was clear he didn’t want to continue the conversation further.

“Yeah,” she nodded.

Pete straightened then, nodding to himself as he did so. Absent-mindedly, he rubbed at his left arm; despite his own injury only causing some muscle damage which was healing well thanks to Verity’s medical expertise, even he had a little more healing to do. “I’ll see you at five o’clock, then,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Rose nodded again, and the pair of them just stared at one another for a moment.

“Oh, come here,” Pete sighed, and the next thing Rose knew he was hugging her tight.

It felt nice, she decided. While Pete had been more than accepting of her since arriving in the parallel world, despite how they’d parted company the previous time, they’d not exactly invaded each other’s personal space. He’d been quick to support her decisions to work for Torchwood, finding her a position suitable for her experience but one that wouldn’t exacerbate her injury until she was fully healed, and he’d introduced her as his daughter to virtually everyone they’d met. He’d even actively helped in coming up with a back story for Rose’s sudden appearance, and had insisted on footing her medical bills. It had been him who had urged her to choose the more hi-tech, expensive prosthetic to the standard one she’d been going to choose. 

But he’d not really initiated any contact past a hand on her shoulder, or a hand on her back while helping with her physical therapy. Until now.

When Pete pulled away, he surprised Rose even further by pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. Rose blinked up at him, and he smiled softly.

“If it all gets a bit too much, being here,” he told her, glancing around the office, “I’m in my office all day. You know where it is. Just come up and you can stay in there with me, yeah?”

Rose nodded. “Yeah,” she told him softly. Then: “Thanks, Dad.”

Pete took his leave then, nodding to other Torchwood employees as he passed them. While Yvonne Hartman had insisted on learning her employees’ names in an effort to appear the ‘perfect’ boss in the other world’s Torchwood, Pete knew everyone’s names purely because their Torchwood was so small. Still just over sixty employees, his Torchwood was tiny in comparison to its parallel counterpart. But his Torchwood didn’t hide things from the public, didn’t shoot down spaceships just to take their technology. And they certainly didn’t believe that anything alien automatically belonged to them.

He wasn’t surprised, when he left the open plan office space, to find Mickey waiting for him outside. Of course, it was Rose’s first day, and Mickey would be worried.

“How is she?” Mickey asked as he and Pete began walking towards the lifts.

“Settling in,” Pete responded. “She wasn’t sure about the comms device, but I told her you wear one and have never had any problems with it.”

Mickey nodded at that. “And you?”

At that, Pete frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s your daughter’s first day at her new job.” Mickey grinned. “Come on, can’t tell me you’re not a little nervous? I bet Jackie was driving you mad this morning.”

Pete sniffed. “Jackie wasn’t exactly relaxed, no,” he admitted with a small grin. “But Rose is fine, she’s settling in.” He paused. “I told her if being here gets a bit too much she can come up to my office for a bit.”

“She’ll be fine,” Mickey countered, sounding positive. “She’s been here with us a few times since she arrived, and that was nearly six months ago. She wants to work here, you’ve just gotta let her get on with her job.”

Pete said nothing. They reached the lifts, and he jabbed the button, ignoring Mickey.

“And you’ve got to stop blaming yourself for her injuries. Rose is fine.”

At that, Pete sighed. “Rose said the same thing just now.”

The lift came and they stepped inside, Pete pressing the button for his floor and Mickey pressing one a few floors below for the field agents’ rooms. The doors slid shut.

“And she’s right, Pete. You saved her. You can’t keep beating yourself up because she got hurt. If you hadn’t done anything, she’d be a lot worse.”

“Rose said that too,” Pete sighed. “It’s just... What sort of a father am I, Mickey? I hurt her. My little girl, she got hurt because I didn’t think... Didn’t consider that the hopper would cause that much damage. I know we have a one hopper per person policy, but I thought that R&D put that in place to cover our backs, health and safety and the like. They told me carrying two people would be dangerous, but they didn’t say... I didn’t know Rose would get hurt so badly.” He took a breath. “I just wanted her safe.”

“The best-laid plans, eh, boss?” Mickey asked sympathetically.

Once again, Pete said nothing. The lift pinged as they reached Mickey’s floor, and when the doors slid shut again, Pete Tyler was alone.

~0~0~

_Rose._

_Rose._

_Rose._

Rose jerked into a sitting position, gasping for breath and blinking sleep from her eyes. She’d thought she’d heard... No, she couldn’t have done. It had been a dream.

She’d heard the Doctor’s voice.

But the funny feeling in her chest wouldn’t leave, and that was how, twenty minutes later, she, her parents, and Mickey were all downstairs in their pyjamas in front of the fire in the sitting room.

“I heard the Doctor’s voice,” she told them, and even to her own ears her voice sounded soft and fragile. “He was callin’ me.”

She told them the dream, all three of them; her dad, her mum, and Mickey. They sat and listened in silence, not interrupting, not questioning her, not suggesting it was some dream brought on by her longing to be back with him and the phantom ache of a limb that was no longer there. There was no condescension; no pointing out that it had been eight months since she’d last seen the Doctor, and that he’d said it would be impossible to travel between universes once the breach had been closed. Occasionally her mum and dad shared a look between them, but it wasn’t judgemental, it wasn’t mocking or concerning. They understood. They understood what it was like to be separated from someone, they understood the longing to see them again and how difficult it could be. And they understood that, regardless of whether Rose’s dream meant something or not, they had to do something to help their daughter.

And less than two hours later, they were packing bags into the back of Pete’s old Jeep.


End file.
